The present invention relates to techniques for permitting shared use of data among a plurality of terminals. The present invention also relates to techniques for handling performance data of musical instruments, and more particularly to performance display techniques.
Remote training systems have been proposed for providing musical instrument performance training through shared use of various data among a plurality of terminals via communication networks. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication Nos. 2002-133238 and 2002-323849 disclose systems, where data, such as voices and video images of an instructor, are transmitted to terminals of students (i.e., student terminals) via a network and data, such as voices and video images of students, are transmitted to a terminal of the instructor (instructor terminal) via the network. The instructor terminal disclosed in the latter laid-open publication downloads teaching or training materials, stored in a training center, in accordance with instructions of the instructor and transmits the downloaded training materials to the student in accordance with instructions of the instructor.
In actual musical instrument performance training, an instructor takes out a desired training material (e.g., musical score) and informs the students of the taken-out training material, and the students take out and view the informed training material. If these operations can be simplified, the training efficiency will be significantly enhanced. However, the No. 2002-133238 publication does not even slightly disclose or suggest such simplification of the operations. Also, with the training system disclosed in the 2002-323849 publication, the instructor has to manipulate the instructor terminal to download a desired training material and again manipulate the instructor terminal to transmit the downloaded training material, and thus the burden of the instructor tends to be great.
Further, in the remote training systems disclosed in the above-mentioned publications, the instructor or student terminal, having received the video image data and performance data, not only displays the images represented by the received video image but also supplies the received performance data to a musical instrument connected to the instructor or student terminal. In turn, the musical instrument, having been supplied with the performance data, sounds or audibly generates tones in accordance with the supplied performance data. In piano performance training using any one of the disclosed training systems, viewing the displayed video images allows the instructor to visually check student's performance operation of the piano and the student to visually check instructor's performance operation of the piano. However, because the keyboard and pedal of the piano tend to be hidden behind the hands and foot of the human player, it is not easy to visually ascertain the piano performance operation from the displayed video images.